It's easy to resent Buffalo's Goo Goo Dolls for having achieved phenomenal
commercial success with a sound that never brought the Replacements
anything more than critical acclaim. But then, nobody ever choked under
pressure like the Replacements (except, perhaps, Paul Westerberg's hero,
Alex Chilton) -- certainly not the more well-adjusted Goo Goo Dolls. And
the pressure was surely on this time: having already scored a massive
midsummer hit by putting Dizzy's "Iris" on the City of Angels soundtrack,
the Goos had to come up with at least one or two more good reasons for
fans to buy their sixth album (which, of course, features "Iris"). So
singer/guitarist Johnny Rzeznik puts on his best "Here Comes A Regular"
voice, which is sounding more and more like Tommy Stinson's Westerberg
imitation every album, and croons sentimentally about a "young man sitting
in an old man's bar waiting for his turn to die" on the plaintive
"Broadway," gets all clumsy and romantic about a girl named May on the
hooky "Slide," and then falls for the girl that "a thousand boys could
never reach" on the semi-acoustic ballad "Black Balloon" (a string-
embellished song aching to be "Achin' To Be"). Let's just say that "Iris"
fans won't be unsatisfied. -- Matt Ashare